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Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

(www.reuters.com)
525 points alex77456 | 5 comments | 26 Sep 25 02:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.019s | source
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remarkEon ◴[26 Sep 25 03:45 UTC] No.45382398[source]▶
>The proposals are the government's latest bid to tackle illegal immigration, with the new ID being a form of proof of a citizen's right to live and work in the UK.

How does a digital ID solve an illegal immigration problem? I watched the video and the suggestion is that this makes it easier for employers to verify that someone is authorized to work. Is that actually true? I don't live in the UK and have not visited in several years. If the idea is that a digital ID authorizes employment ... well I hope people can see the problem, here.

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mrtksn ◴[26 Sep 25 04:32 UTC] No.45382656[source]▶
The banks and service providers can ask for your digital ID, the employers can ask for your digital ID and when that becomes the standart you will have very hard time to have a life in UK without having all the permissions.

Most of EU and many other countries have something like that, at least you have a citizenship or resident number that they can check against to see what's your situation.

In UK though, everything is run over proof of address and it's quite annoying for new immigrants(legal or not) because its circular. You can't have anything that can be used as proof of address without having proof of address already. At some point you manage to break circle by first having something that doesn't require proof of address but it is serious enough to be accepted as one, i.e. I know people who were riding the tube without tapping in so that when they are caught the government will send them a letter about their fine and they can use the letter to open a bank account.

The Turkish version is both great, annoying and terrible.Great because you can do all your government stuff and some other stuff like see your full medical history, make an appointment etc or managing your service subscription(water, electricity, cable. GSM etc) from the government portal. Annoying because whatever you buy beyond groceries now they are asking for your ID number and all purchases are becoming a chore. Terrible because these systems are regularly hacked and all your private data is online for sale and some even run an API to access your govt stuff live.

It works fine to manage legal immigration, you give the immigrants the ID so the can have their subscriptions etc. Once they are no longer wanted you know where to find them and make providers cut them off. It doesn't work for illegal immigrants because since they can't register to anything they end up just asking a friend to start them a subscription or pay extra to have some employee start them a subscription that in the records look like its for the employee.

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wsc981[dead post] ◴[26 Sep 25 04:54 UTC] No.45382802[source]▶
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mrtksn ◴[26 Sep 25 04:58 UTC] No.45382818[source]▶
That's just propaganda. It does matter if you are legal or not a lot. It's extremely hard for an illegal immigrant to have a life in EU.

Free housing is some shithole where you have to stay all the time until you are processed and that can take years, healthcare is something very basic if you get injured and welfare is some very basic food or money to buy food. Some countries with enough resources may provide something slightly better or use you as a method to transfer money to local businesses by putting you in a hotel room and giving you pocket change instead of running proper immigration camps.

If you think that its so great being immigrant burn you documentation and enjoy the experience. You understand that you can too claim that you lost your ID, right?

I don't understand why people are this gullible, its widespread to believe that its a lifehack to be an illegal immigrant. If you like it that much, just become one.

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curtisblaine ◴[26 Sep 25 05:43 UTC] No.45383083{3}[source]▶
But the "life hack", as far as I understand, is not living in Uk's govt temporary accommodation waiting for a decision, it's rather leaving your temporary accommodation without any way for the government to track you, then work illegal, cash in hand jobs, which are still more remunerative than what you had back home. In this case, seeking asylum is not the goal: it's just a loop-hole to not get deported immediately.
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mrtksn ◴[26 Sep 25 05:49 UTC] No.45383119{4}[source]▶
Everyone can do that if its that great.

Some years ago I met a Palestinian guy in who was staying in hostels in London, receiving something like 800GBP as aid and illegally working his ass off in constructions for something around the min wage. I've seen him only in the late evenings as he was working all the other times.

He was living the dream I guess. Hacked the life.

Anyway, I have him on Facebook and occasionally check on him and he eventually he became properly documented and the last time I checked he got into real estate business.

Immigrants are not life hacking, they are just trying to build a life on hard mode. The end game is to become legal, which is the the default state of the people who feel like they are the victim and immigrants are having it good.

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1. curtisblaine ◴[26 Sep 25 06:50 UTC] No.45383512{5}[source]▶
That is beside the point. The point is that they are using a loophole in the asylum process to stay illegally for more time than they're allowed. After they successfully do that, they of course have to work illegally (endangering themselves and others), they don't (can't) pay taxes, and they end up sending all the money they earned abroad. All attempts to close this loophole by various governments have been unfruitful, mainly because of strenuous left-wing opposition: Italian government tried to fingerprint them years ago (in order to make them more easily identifiable) but the law was killed. British government tried to move them in other (third world) countries during the asylum process (to make escaping their accommodation less appealing) but they couldn't do that. Now they're trying to shorten the asylum decision waiting window (which is ~1 year iirc), but that again is something that will be appealed to death.
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2. mrtksn ◴[26 Sep 25 06:56 UTC] No.45383565[source]▶
Instantly fixable by letting people work legally.
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3. curtisblaine ◴[26 Sep 25 07:26 UTC] No.45383785[source]▶
Countries have a right of controlling immigration in their territory. Letting illegal immigrants stay and work essentially negates that right.
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4. jodrellblank ◴[26 Sep 25 19:03 UTC] No.45389885{3}[source]▶
a) if it's illegal then the country isn't letting them do it.

b) if your solution to it is that everyone else must have a mandatory state surveillance card powered by Palantir, Infosys, or Fujitsu Horizon so that you know who to target your hate at, you need to be forced back to the drawing board.

We fought World War II against the "papers please" people who were using those documents to clear out undesirables. "strenuous left-wing opposition" has a pretty good history. right-wing authoritarianism ... doesn't.

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5. curtisblaine ◴[26 Sep 25 21:36 UTC] No.45391266{4}[source]▶
> if it's illegal then the country isn't letting them do it.

Parent's suggestion was to make all illegal immigrants able to work legally, no question asked. This is equivalent to legalize all illegal immigrants, which is not a solution, it's a capitulation.

> if your solution to it is that everyone else must have a mandatory state surveillance card powered by

Well, no. The government is introducing a surveillance card because they always wanted to do that. They are able to use migrants as an excuse because every other means of controlling asylum seekers during their examination period has been made impossible.

To be absolutely clear, the problem is not legal migrants entering the country or asylum seekers seeking asylum. The problem is asylum seekers using the asylum process as a loophole to enter the country and disappear from the government's radar. The government is unable to close the loophole and now it is using the mere existence of the loophole to justify mass surveillance of everyone but those who should be watched.